Page 124 of Nico (Belles & Mobsters 2)

“Yes, D.C. She took Bear with her.” A silence followed and Leonardo must have sensed the unease. “You asked her to pick up some documents for her mom?” One heartbeat. “Fuck!”

It took him saying it out loud for him to figure out I didn’t.

My bloodstream heated and tension settled under my skin and buried in my muscles with a grating texture.She fucking left me!Something tightened in my throat and pierced straight through my fucking chest. It felt like a goddamn heart attack.

No, she wouldn’t have taken Bear if she was leaving. But she was definitely up to something.

I rolled my shoulders, forcing calmness to wash over through every cell of me. Losing my shit right now wouldn’t help anyone.

“The twins?”

My cell signaled an incoming call. It was Alexei. Before I answered it, I waited for Leonardo’s reply.

“They are home with Gia.”

Overwhelming relief washed over me. She’d never leave without her girls. Bianca was a good mother that would give her life for her kids. Maybe not for me but for her daughters, she’d burn down this world to keep them safe.

“Tell the men to keep their eyes on them. Do not let them out of your goddamn sight.”

I ended the call.

“What in the fuck is going on?” Cassio asked. We have been friends for a long time for him not to pick up on my signals.

“Bianca left the compound,” I told him as I answered Alexei’s call. “I hope you have eyes on them,” I said grimly into my cell. Thank God and all the saints I’d asked Alexei to keep extra men around the compound. They were to follow any suspicious drive-by. It didn’t hurt to have extra security, and Alexei had sharp intuition. He even offered to stick around for a while, although this was way beneath his skillset. He took Sophia’s suffering personally.

“I do and they are in deep shit,” Alexei’s cold voice crept through the line. His words hit me like a punch to my chest.

“Speak.”

It took Alexei Nikolaev to summarize it all in two minutes. Two fucking minutes was all it took for Benito to get his filthy clutches on my woman.

Benito has my wife! He has my woman!

The same sense of dread when I found out that he got his clutches on my sister pooled in the pit of my stomach. It tasted like acid and ash. If I lost her, I’d lose my shit. There was no doubt about it.

Last night I asked her to stop the pill. Another lie. She has been taking make-shift vitamins that I planted instead of pills. I should have told her I loved her and wanted to keep her with me forever. I should have apologized for using her, manipulating her, and deceiving her.

“Nico, what is it?” Cassio asked. I forgot Luca and Cassio were still here. If something happened to their sister, they’d never forgive me. Fuck, even if they did, it wouldn’t matter because I wouldn’t.

“Benito has Bianca and her mother.” I couldn’t understand how my voice even functioned. I stood up and went to my safe.

“How?” Luca questioned.

“What happened?” Cassio demanded.

I opened the safe and took another gun out of it, a knife, and several magazines of ammunition.

“She went into the city with her mother. Benito got to her in the waiting room of the building.” I tucked a gun into the back of my pants, a knife in the holster around my ankle. I still had my gun holster. “Alexei trailed them. He knows their location.”

Cassio and Luca strode over. “I need bullets too.”

“Me too.” Luca extended his hand. “Is Alexei with us?”

I had to give it to Cassio and Luca. At least they weren’t throwing blame. Yet, I felt it. It was eating at me, and if something happened to Bianca, there’d be nothing left of my heart.

“Yes.” The numbers would still be against us. I typed a message to Leonardo to double security at the manor and send twenty men to the location Alexei shared through iCloud.

“Do you have a plan?” Cassio asked, his jaw ticking. He was pissed off, not that I couldn’t blame him. Images of Nicoletta’s body played in my mind, bloodied and raped. She died in my home, in my arms, but they butchered her body in that gallery. I still owned it, unable to get rid of the bloodied ghost. It was the last place I saw her happy.

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